Great Singers, Second Series eBook

of Moliere’s dramas, the terror of the last
scene when (between his teeth almost) the great artist
uttered the line—­’Suir uscio tremendo
lo sguardo figgiamo’—­clutching
the while the weak and guilty woman by the wrist,
as he dragged her to the door behind which her falsity
was screened, was something fearful, a sound to chill
the blood, a sight to stop the breath.”
This writer, in describing his performance of the part
of the Doge in Verdi’s “I Due Foscari,”
thus characterizes the last act when the Venetian
chief refuses to pardon his own son for the crime
of treason, faithful to Venice against his agonized
affections as a father: “He looked sad,
weak, weary, leaned back as if himself ready to give
up the ghost, but, when the woman after the allotted
bars of noise began again her second-time agony, it
was wondrous to see how the old sovereign turned in
his chair, with the regal endurance of one who says
‘I must endure to the end,’ and again gathered
his own misery into his old father’s heart,
and shut it up close till the woman ended. Unable
to grant her petition, unable to free his son, the
old man when left alone could only rave till his heart
broke. Signor Ronconi’s Doge is not
to be forgotten by those who do not regard art as
a toy, or the singer’s art as something entirely
distinct from dramatic truth.”

His performance of the quack doctor Dulcamara,
in “L’Elisir d’Amore,” was
no less amazing as a piece of humorous acting, a creation
matched by that of the haggard, starveling poet in
“Matilda di Shabran” and Papageno
in Mozart’s “Zauberflote.” Anything
more ridiculous and mirthful than these comedy chef-d’ouvres
could hardly be fancied. The same critic quoted
above says: “One could write a page on his
Barber in Rossini’s master-work; a paragraph
on his Duke in ’Lucrezia Borgia,’
an exhibition of dangerous, suspicious, sinister malice
such as the stage has rarely shown; another on his
Podesta in ‘La Gazza Ladra’ (in
these two characters bringing him into close rivalry
with Lablache, a rivalry from which he issued unharmed);
and last, and almost best of his creations, his Masetto.”
Ronconi is, we believe, still living, though no longer
on the stage; but his memory will remain one of the
great traditions of the lyric drama, so long as consummate
histrionic ability is regarded as worthy of respect
by devotees of the opera.

V.

Mme. Viardot’s name is, perhaps, more closely
associated with the music of Meyerbeer than that of
any other composer. Her Alice in “Robert
le Diable,” her Valentine in “Les
Huguenots,” added fresh luster to her fame.
In the latter character no representative of opera,
in spite of the long bead-roll of eminent names interwoven
with the record of this musical work, is worthy to
be compared with her. This part was for years
regarded as standing to her what Medea was to